The Truths We Etched
by Mizzykitty
Summary: A thief passes for a gentleman when stealing has made him rich. – Dutch proverb. Note: The pairing is Tomas Vergis/Daniel Graystone.


**_~I watched the lights go out in your eyes,_**

**_I felt the love seep out of my life,_**

**_I saw the truths we etched in stone,_**

**_I watched them blow away like sand~_**

Tomas glanced around the sparsely but expensively decorated office. A massive, 'I'm the master of the frakking universe' desk in the center of the room declared itself like a slap to the face. _Typical Caprican hubris_. Tomas could actually own the twelve colonies and he'd still remember his roots, and each and every person that had helped him on his way to the top, because on Tauron, things like loyalty, and family, were more than just things to be used, and leveraged, and trotted out on Sarno to rescue your plummeting stock prices.

A hidden door at the other end of the room opened, and _he_ entered. He was smartly dressed, in a dark gray suit, white shirt, and a dark blue tie with gray stripes to bring the whole ensemble together. The clean cut, picture perfect businessman, as always. Tomas wondered, idly, if Amanda had put the outfit together for him. Danny never did have much of an eye for fashion.

Then Tomas looked into his eyes, and he had to force himself to hold that gaze, even as his guts twisted with visceral rage. A pale, indeterminate shade of gray-blue-green, those eyes could be bleeding with emotion one moment and crystalline, _soulless_ the next. Daniel Graystone – famous industrialist, brilliant scientist, loyal friend, devoted husband, grieving father, thief, murderer, master of deception. Tomas had been fooled once, had believed in the lies those eyes could sell with such conviction, but _his_ eyes were open now, and never again would he believe anything this serpent among men had to say with his sinuous smile and forked tongue.

"So…I'm here," Daniel said. He slid his hands into the pockets of his slacks and shot him an easy smile. Tomas could imagine he was smiling just so as he handed his blood money over to the _Ha'la'tha_. He wanted nothing more than to wipe it off his face with the nearest wall.

Tomas closed the distance between them in a few deliberate strides. "You are," he agreed, circling him slowly.

"Time is money, Tomas," Daniel said, with an air of a parent reproaching an errant child. "Especially mine."

"Oh, I'm well aware of that, Danny, believe me."

"Don't," Daniel said, his soft voice edged with warning even as his eyes flicked from amiable to brittle in a blink.

Tomas smirked. "Don't what? Remind you of a past you'd rather forget?"

Daniel snorted softly. "I thought we were copasetic. Isn't that what you told Sarno, and billions of viewers across the twelve worlds?"

"Some of us don't feel the need to air our dirty laundry in public," Tomas said with a shrug. "Speaking of which, how is Amanda? She doesn't seem to be coping-"

"You leave her out of this," Daniel snapped.

"Oh, _now_ you want to leave her out of it?"

Daniel's lips pressed together into a thin line. "Is that why you came here, Tomas, to rehash the past in private because you couldn't bring yourself to do it on galactic television?"

In a move too sudden for Daniel to block, Tomas grabbed him by the back of the neck and smashed his face into the desk. Blood splattered over the glass, and immediately beaded into perfectly spherical little red droplets on the smooth, transparent surface. Daniel struggled in his grip, and managed to kick him hard in the shin. He pressed his switchblade to the pale skin where an artery pulsed close to the surface and Daniel stilled.

Tomas leaned over his prone captive, breathing in the strong scent of cigarettes and cologne. It brought back a kaleidoscopic skirl of old memories. Danny sprawled in their messy bed, spent after a night of passion, half asleep with a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lax fingers. Amanda's soft, yielding mouth beneath his, the luscious feel of a breast in his hand. Danny's smile, Amanda's laughter, the way they used to bicker about the hazards of smoking in bed and oh, that frakking car. The taste of them mingled on his tongue.

Tomas closed his eyes and exhaled. "I'm going to rob you, Daniel," he whispered into the lightly freckled curve of his ear, "the way you robbed me, of us, of my daughter, of my life's work, and now of the only thing I managed to salvage from our so-called partnership, my MCP chip. Tell me something, Danny, do you even know how it works, or how to use it?"

Instead of answering, Daniel asked, "What do you think this is going to accomplish?" but his ragged breaths, leaving cones of mist on the pristine glass desk, confirmed everything Tomas had already guessed.

"You don't, do you, because I was always the better scientist. Graystone Industries was built on _my_ research, and _my_ ingenuity, but hey, everyone believed you when you said I was just the _technician_, didn't they? Because who would believe that a dirty Tauron could have the brains to invent anything?"

"I never said that!" Daniel protested. "I-"

Pressing his forearm against the back of Daniel's neck to pin him in place, Tomas reached down to skim Daniel's trouser-clad crotch with his blade. To Daniel's credit, he didn't flinch…much.

With a quick, upward flick, Tomas sliced his leather belt in two. From the way Daniel jerked in his hands, he figured he'd probably cut him a little too, but it was probably just a scratch. "Come off it, Danny, it's a matter of public record now. You can't erase the past just by pretending it didn't happen."

"Get off me, Tomas," Daniel gritted.

"Or what?" Tomas sneered as he sliced through the waistband of the gray trousers. They slid to the ground with a soft rustle. "You've taken everything from me. What more can you do to me?"

He pulled down the silk boxer shorts – _pretentious bastard_ – and pushed up the shirt and jacket to reveal the pale expanse of freckled skin beneath. It used to amuse him no end that the freckles went all the way down. Daniel shivered as Tomas skimmed the blade over his back, leaving a slowly welling cut in its wake.

"I could have you arrested."

"And I could do the same." Tomas bent down and ran his tongue over the gash, the deliciously metallic tang of blood setting his heart pounding. He reached down and fondled Daniel's growing erection. "Let's face it, Danny, I've got you by the balls, literally and figuratively."

Daniel's hips jerked forward instinctively, and he ground himself to full arousal against Tomas's hand. "What do you want from me, Tomas?" he said, turning his head to gaze up at Tomas from the corner of his eye. "You must know this won't change anything."

Tomas licked the blade and carved another line into that pale flesh. A quiet hiss escaped between Daniel's tightly clenched teeth. "I want blood for blood, Daniel. It's the Tauron way, or didn't your _Ha'la'tha_ friends tell you?"

The next cut was a serpentine curve connecting the two lines in a graceful swirl. Tomas scraped the flat of his hand over the cuts, collecting the viscous red fluid before he palmed it over his already twitching cock. Blood was a poor lubricant, but there was something undeniably just about the gesture. Daniel was ready for him anyway. Tomas could feel him relaxing in his grip even as he pushed in. He groaned, and gods, he could almost imagine it was one of those muggy summer nights in that sweltering basement laboratory, where they used to stay up all night painstakingly hand drawing their own circuit boards because they couldn't afford to get them professionally printed, etching and soldering and wiring until they were exhausted and then frakking like animals on the piles of junk. But this was now, not then, and what was lost could never be regained. He fisted his hand in Daniel's hair and yanked his head back, savoring the clench around his cock and the subsequent gasp of pain.

"You can't just go around destroying people's lives," Tomas growled as he rocked into the searing heat. "There are consequences for every action, even for you."

Hands gripping the edge of the desk, Daniel pushed back into him, meeting him thrust for thrust. This had been a long time coming. All the catty insults thrown back and forth between them in the various media forums over the years, the industrial espionage, the few, charged confrontations whenever they happened to run into each other at public events – it had all been leading back to this, back to the beginning, when they were nothing more than two dirt poor computer geeks with a pile of second hand parts and a vision for the future.

Tomas fisted Daniel's cock and stroked him roughly in a rhythm they'd worked out years ago. Daniel moaned, his hips demanding a faster pace. Tomas's instinct was to deny him, punish him, but he wanted it too much himself. He bent low over Daniel, his nose buried in the back of his neck, and together they set a brutal pace, rough and hard, with Tomas's wide hands tangled in Daniel's hair, and the hot wet blood between them soaking his once crisp white shirt and staining his skin.

Tomas came with a guttural snarl. He closed his eyes as the aftershocks rolled through him, years of pent up anger and frustration bleeding from him with each spurt. Finally, he took a few shaky breaths and pulled out. Daniel growled a protest, and Tomas almost laughed. He pushed Daniel's face down hard against the desk with his left hand and with his right, he finished his work of art. Slowly, he carved a circle on either side of the design. Daniel bucked in his hands. Whether it was in pain or pleasure, Tomas didn't know and didn't particularly care. With a final diagonal slash connecting the two circles, Daniel came with a low moan.

Tomas smirked as Daniel went limp beneath his hands. He flipped him over so that he could look into those chameleon eyes. There was nothing in them - no remorse, no shame, just the cold superiority of a sociopath.

Daniel pressed his fingers to the bloody stain on Tomas's chest. "What does it mean?"

"Traitor," Tomas spat.

Daniel snorted. "It's the cost of doing business, Tomas."

"Perhaps, but this, Daniel, is the price of betrayal," Tomas said as he pressed the blade against Daniel's left carotid and drew it across to his right. Warmth sprayed his chest as Daniel spluttered and choked on his own blood. Within seconds, he had taken his last breath, a startled, somewhat indignant expression frozen on his face.

Then the avatar flickered, and de-res'ed.

Tomas closed the switchblade and eased it back into his pocket. He tucked himself away, zipping his pants and straightening his shirt. It wasn't necessary, but he did it anyway. When he turned around, his companion had reappeared, this time wearing what Tomas assumed was his real avatar.

Holo-whores - the new face of prostitution. For a modest price, you could frak anyone you wanted in V-world - movie stars, famous musicians, politicians, your own frakking daughter. Anyone, and Daniel Graystone had made it all possible. The irony was not lost on Tomas.

"It was a good likeness," Tomas said.

The virtual prostitute smiled. "I thought you'd like it. To be honest, it was frakkin' easy, with all the holo-footage of him lately."

"You get demands for him often?" Tomas asked idly as he handed over his payment chit.

"Not often, but some." A low chuckle. "Usually women, but hey, I don't judge. You get what you pay for."

Tomas nodded.

"That's a nice Vergis avatar. Footage of him is kind of rare. Mind if I ask who made it?"

"I made it."

The whore whistled appreciatively. "Nice piece of work." He pointed at his arms. "I especially like the detail there, with the tatts. I mean, I've never seen Vergis without a shirt, but hey, he's Tauron, right? He's gotta have ink somewhere. Those look good, too – authentic."

"The devil's in the details," Tomas muttered.

"You really think Zoe Graystone was Vergis's kid?"

Tomas shrugged. "You tell me. How does a blond and a redhead have a child with Tauron coloring?"

The whore laughed, a too-bright sound in that austere setting. "I never thought of that, but yeah, you're right. Gods, wouldn't that be funny?"

"Hysterical," Tomas answered.

The whore handed the payment chit back. "Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Langdon. Come back and see me again sometime."

Tomas reached up and pulled the holoband off his head. He very much doubted he'd be back. Sure, it'd been a good frak, but on a deeper level, it had left him frustrated and unsatisfied, even more so than before. No, he wouldn't try that again. Next time, he vowed, he'd do it for real, or die trying.


End file.
